I found this webcomic the other day - I wonder if you've heard of it? It's called XKCD. Everything that guy writes is completely hilarious! Wow, that hat-wearing guy sure is evil, huh?

TRWTF is you missed the point that the post was actually forwarding to a WTF. I don't see how XKCD is a WTF. Joel's blog is in no way a WTF (except for the design he used until he finally changed it about a month ago), so this is not advertisement and it is related to a single WTF in the fabric of space-time.

PS: For the nerds that don't know about XKCD, look it up on Google; I think it's actually worth reading the comics, starting with the first ones.

Did did you actually read the anonymous comment in question? There is no attribution whatsoever. Although it was sloppy for Paul Boutin to assume this was a statement by Joel himself without positive attribution, if someone linked you directly to the comment there is no indication that it is an anonymous post by a forum user. What a godawful shitty piece of forum software. Then again, I wouldn't expect anything better out of Joel or the retards that make up his discussion board. Hell, he even admits the misunderstanding was partially his fault and had to disable anonymous posting (rather than, you know, fixing the fucking bug in the first place). Of course, this prevents future confusion, but it doesn't help with existing anonymous comments and it disables what would seem to be a useful feature. If Joel felt the need to permit anonymous comments in the first place, then it's unclear why he would prefer to remove them completely rather than make sure they are clearly attributed.

Joel Spolsky is such a Prima Donna bitch and this whole debacle shows why I don't bother reading his nonsense anymore. He just loves to hear himself talk and evidently feels it is more important to make a big scene rather than adding a simple, necessary feature to his forum software so this doesn't happen again. Barf.

Right on, morpheus wallet. TRWTF is that that "forum" looks exactly like an article + comments. And without any other attribution, the word "anonymous," or "forum," I would have assumed it was from Joel, too, under all but the most investigative standards.

Joel Spolsky is such a Prima Donna bitch and this whole debacle shows why I don't bother reading his nonsense anymore. He just loves to hear himself talk and evidently feels it is more important to make a big scene rather than adding a simple, necessary feature to his forum software so this doesn't happen again. Barf.

So on balance, not a fan then?

Personally I never tire of hearing about how fabulous their offices are and how everyone gets motorised desks/Aeron chairs/sextuple monitors/telepathic user interfaces. Plus I've never heard of their software anywhere else but on that site. Meh, maybe it's just me.

Plus I've never heard of their software anywhere else but on that site. Meh, maybe it's just me.

We tried out Fogbugz at the office almost entirely based on the opinion of the Spolsky-fanbois where I work, a decidedly vocal minority. (They offer a 30-day trial that they host for you.) It was... alright. I think Jira (and TFS, and even Project, and a bunch of others) beat it hands-down, but it was... fine. Nothing remarkable.

The support guys also looked at Fog Creek's remote-assistance thing, but we were already pretty entrenched with the Citrix equivalent and found no compelling reason to switch.

I think Joel realizes he's not producing anything revolutionary there, it just pays enough for him to rent his swanky midtown Manhattan digs and travel around the world promoting his stuff (which mostly sounds like an excuse to travel around the world). Never bothered w/ the forums or anything else on his site, really.

Did did you actually read the anonymous comment in question? There is no attribution whatsoever. Although it was sloppy for Paul Boutin to assume this was a statement by Joel himself without positive attribution, if someone linked you directly to the comment there is no indication that it is an anonymous post by a forum user.

Excellent point, that's what I was thinking, but any journalist should always check the source, not just write everything he hears on the street. That guy should have at least tried to contact Joel and ask for more details, a newspaper isn't TDWTF where you paste code, URLs or JPEG screenshots. The journalist just read something on the Internet and reproduced it. Good thing he didn't hear about IRC.

Hell, he even admits the misunderstanding was partially his fault and had to disable anonymous posting (rather than, you know, fixing the fucking bug in the first place). Of course, this prevents future confusion, but it doesn't help with existing anonymous comments and it disables what would seem to be a useful feature.

He's probably trying to create an ideal community where identity is not important, forgetting that he deals with human beings, who cheat, steal and lie all the time. He should grow up.

I'm gonna sidestep the whole Joel bashing thing and focus on the reporting. Ah, reporters... they never fail to make my fist itch. I was watching the news yesterday and they had a couple of stories about the net. Now I don't know how it is where you live, but here journalist + technology = guaranteed retardation.

It would seem that MP3s are bad for your health. How are they bad you ask... well, aparently if you listen to your ipod or whatever all day long at high volumes you can damage your hearing. Now technically this is true, but you know that tomorrow they're going be countless retards out there talking about how MP3s are bad, mmmkay. So remember kids, just say no to MP3s.

Actually shit is usually a good fertilizer, much of his software is below that.

We tried their CoPilot remote assistance thingy and found it to be pretty good. It managed to bore its way through a client's retarded setup when nothing else could be persuaded to work. It wasn't quite as snappy as the windows RDP client but it was much better than VNC.

We tried their CoPilot remote assistance thingy and found it to be pretty good. It managed to bore its way through a client's retarded setup when nothing else could be persuaded to work. It wasn't quite as snappy as the windows RDP client but it was much better than VNC.

(1) You could also try NTR Support. Their UI is just awful but their clients never failed me yet, no matter how bad the network setup was and firewalls just need to be configured to allow outgoing connections on the usual ports (80, 21, 443, etc).

(2) The problem with Joel is that he tries to make everything as simple as possible, which is rarely a good idea, and he tries to make too many things at the same time without focusing properly on a single product, which leads to many issues (see: Micro$oft). As soon as he grows up, he might actually have a chance to make a decent product, being a more-than-decent programmer. Programming is more than an ideology. Programming is a process which creates products. Products sell if they're good and have decent markeing. Nobody wants to pay cash for an ideology.

(2) The problem with Joel is that he tries to make everything as simple as possible, which is rarely a good idea, and he tries to make too many things at the same time without focusing properly on a single product, which leads to many issues (see: Microsoft).

It seems you have misspelled Microsoft, so I have corrected the mistake for you. I'm not entirely sure how you accidentally pressed shift+5 when a simple s was sufficient. You must have very wide fingers as the keys aren't anywhere near each other on any keyboard configuration with which I am familiar.

I'm not entirely sure how you accidentally pressed shift+5 when a simple s was sufficient.

I find it hard to believe that there are people in the world who are that %tupid.

FTFY.

I hit bold but it actually made the percent sign smaller. go figure

Ah, ye%. It %eem% that Welbog wa% the %tupid one all along.

I hate computers. There's actually no $ on Romanian keyboards. He had to use charmap or some kind of arcane ALT code to generate it, unless he's using a US locale or something. I just picked a combination hoping that no one would call me on it. I should know better.

Joel Spolsky is such a Prima Donna bitch and this whole debacle shows why I don't bother reading his nonsense anymore. He just loves to hear himself talk and evidently feels it is more important to make a big scene rather than adding a simple, necessary feature to his forum software so this doesn't happen again. Barf.

I don't disagree with you on most points, but I do find some of his content thought provoking. However, the signal to noise ratio could be better, and I often disagree with him.Kinda like morbiuswilters. In a recent post, that whole intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation thing blew up in his face. I enjoyed that.

Personally I never tire of hearing about how fabulous their offices are and how everyone gets motorised desks/Aeron chairs/sextuple monitors/telepathic user interfaces. Plus I've never heard of their software anywhere else but on that site. Meh, maybe it's just me.

Don't forget about working in the Isreali army, and working in a bakery, too. It's very important that you remember those things.

Joel Spolsky is such a Prima Donna bitch and this whole debacle shows why I don't bother reading his nonsense anymore. He just loves to hear himself talk and evidently feels it is more important to make a big scene rather than adding a simple, necessary feature to his forum software so this doesn't happen again. Barf.

I don't disagree with you on most points, but I do find some of his content thought provoking. However, the signal to noise ratio could be better, and I often disagree with him.Kinda like morbiuswilters. In a recent post, that whole intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation thing blew up in his face. I enjoyed that.

Joel makes a few good points, but when he's wrong, he's so wrong that he completely destroys whatever cred he's built up since the last time he sent the Insight-O-Meter crashing to zero. I also don't really care for his drama queenage over the last couple of years.

As long as he never starts in about "great programmers" again, he'll be ok in my book. I've met one guy in my life who was the sort of massively skilled obsessive-hobbyist-turned-pro that Joel claims he wants to hire, and guess what? The guy was an insufferable prick with a borderline personality who suffered from mood swings with such regularity that I'm convinced he somehow had PMS. But he was a good programmer, I have to give him that.

Joel Spolsky is such a Prima Donna bitch and this whole debacle shows why I don't bother reading his nonsense anymore. He just loves to hear himself talk and evidently feels it is more important to make a big scene rather than adding a simple, necessary feature to his forum software so this doesn't happen again. Barf.

I hate computers. There's actually no $ on Romanian keyboards. He had to use charmap or some kind of arcane ALT code to generate it, unless he's using a US locale or something. I just picked a combination hoping that no one would call me on it. I should know better.

So your keyboard doesn't have a $ on it? Don't you live in Canada? Don't you people use dollars? Do you people really have to use some obscure key combination just to enter the symbol for your own money? If so, that would explain why you are so far behind the US, what with your bags of milk and fur trapping and igloos...

You know, it takes looking at something like Joel apparently uses to realize that, in fact, *this* is high-quality forum software (excluding, of course, the very obvious, protruding bits that caused Alex to select it as the forum software for *this* site.

Of course, having only looked at that one post, for all I can tell, it's actually a case of Joel being full of it, and had, in fact, made the original post, but then decided he couldn't take the heat of being the author...